Scott didn’t see me that afternoon… but it was hard not to wonder if he’d walked through the hotel at some point. Anyone could wander in from the street, especially if they looked like a tourist and had some confidence about them.
Even as I was thinking it, I knew it was nonsensical. How would Scott know I was staying in a cottage? How would he have got in? What could he do with a locked phone?
Why bother?
It was after that when I realised I’d have to go back to the room and use the hotel phone to call the UK and get my SIM card cancelled.
More hassle, more stress – but I didn’t get a chance to do anything.
By the time I got back to the cottages, Mum was on her way out. I’d not even realised the length of time I’d spent in reception. I told her I was missing my phone, but she shrugged and said: ‘It’ll turn up.’ She continued walking past me and then stopped and turned to say: ‘It’s dinner now.’
It felt like being a child again. When your mum tells you to do something with such a tone that it doesn’t feel like there’s any alternative.
Despite everything that happened on the holiday, those dinners were the one constant. It was Mum’s way of keeping away the disorder; something she could control.
Julius: It was a quiet dinner on that third night. Claire had gone, Victor was sulking, Dad was in hospital, Mum was pining for him, Emma was buried in her conspiracies, Daniel had no one to bore with his skiing stories, though he still tried – and Amy and Chloe had tired themselves out by the pool.
Best night of the trip.
Emma: Victor was sulking because Claire had left. He ended up sitting next to his dad and Daniel was busy boring the arse off him by going on about some hunting trip they’d gone on a couple of years before. He was the only one talking at that table and was getting louder the more he drank.
His skin had gone full giant radish at this point. I felt hot just looking at him. He’s the sort of man who will walk around saying how he ‘always caught the sun’, even though what he actually means is that that he’s roasted himself for ten hours with no sun cream. The type who’ll dismiss all science and government warnings because he’s not got skin cancer.
The louder and drunker he got, the more I had to dig my nails into my palms to stop myself from saying something. Daniel was dominating that table with Dad gone. He was finally master of the domain. He’d click his fingers towards waiters to demand more wine and his eyes would follow the women in their short dresses, even though his wife was right there.
When Dad and Alan owned the property business, it was a fifty-fifty thing. After Alan died and things changed, Dad ended up keeping fifty-one per cent, with Daniel buying the other forty-nine. I don’t know the specifics of everything – but that’s how it stood on that day.
Who benefits? was the only thing I kept thinking. Scott had got that phrase into my head and it wasn’t going anywhere.
Julius: Victor left the table first. He said he was off to show a local girl a good time.
Emma: Ugh.
Victor: It was a joke. Everyone at that table knew it was a joke.
Emma: After Victor left, I waited about five minutes and then figured I could make a break for it, too. I had no plans for the evening, other than to call my phone company and then go to sleep. There’s that saying about things seeming different in the morning and I really hoped so many things would.
I said goodnight to the twins and Mum – and then walked off towards the cottages. There’s an archway a little past the pool, before you get to the walkway for the cottages, where it’s almost completely dark. It’s only a few steps to get through it and then there’s another row of lights. I stood under that arch, looking at the midges buzz close to the lights near the pool, and I felt watched and… vulnerable, I suppose.
I don’t think I stood there long, maybe a couple of seconds, and then I walked really quickly back to the cottage. I let myself in and then locked the door behind me. I didn’t turn on any lights, but I stood in the window, looking out towards the lawn. I don’t know what I expected to see, if anything, but I couldn’t lose that feeling of being exposed.
It was probably five minutes until I pulled the curtains and went through to the bedroom.
I saw it the moment I went through, sitting on the side table exactly where I’d left it hours before. Exactly where it hadn’t been when I’d last looked.
My phone was back.
Chapter Nineteen
Day Four
THE SECOND GLASS
Emma: Mum woke me up the next morning. I was still dozing when she knocked on the cottage door. She was looking brighter and said she was off to the hospital to see Dad being brought out of the coma. She said she’d contact me if there was any news – but no one was really using their phones on the island because of the poor signal.
There was an optimism about her voice that hadn’t been there in a couple of days. She told me to go and enjoy the island and that there was no point in wasting the day.
Perhaps she saw something in my face when she said that. Something I didn’t know was there. In the end, I can’t tell you why that was the day we finally had the conversation. It had been around three years overdue, but I suppose I didn’t want to hear it and she didn’t want to say it. Then we were away from our comfort zones and normality and, from nowhere, she finally said it.
She goes: ‘It was only two glasses.’
I was standing in the door frame of the cottage and she was about two steps away. She looked right into my eyes, like she was staring into my soul, and her voice croaked as if she was getting over a cold.
I couldn’t reply at first, there weren’t words. Time shifted. We were suddenly in the cottage’s living room area. She was on the sofa, but I was standing, looking down towards her.
She repeated herself: ‘It was only two glasses.’
I stared and all I could say was: ‘It was still drink-driving, Mum.’
She started with: ‘In my day—’ but I couldn’t listen to that. I talked over her, saying that it wasn’t her day and that it didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have had the second glass. I shouldn’t have had the first.
If I hadn’t been driving that day, then I wouldn’t have killed my little boy…
…
…
No, I don’t want a minute. I want to say this.
Mum goes: ‘It was the other driver who was speeding, not you.’
That’s what they kept talking about in court. My solicitor was convinced it was why I’d be dealt with leniently. That’s the truth – but it doesn’t help. I didn’t want leniency.
After the other car hit mine, there was bits of our vehicles scattered across the road. The paramedics was there with the fire brigade and the police. They were trying to cut my little boy free from the wreckage. I should be able to tell you what I was doing, but I don’t remember. I never see the scene in moving images. They’re always still shots as if I wasn’t there. As if I saw the pictures the next day and that those are what stayed with me.
While all that was going on, the other driver and I were both breathalysed. It wasn’t in question that he was speeding and had gone through a red light – there was CCTV of it happening – but his reading was zero. Mine was over.